The Dr Foster Unit has developed a method for monitoring clinical standards with real potential to improve health service outcomes.

There is an ever-increasing focus on monitoring clinical standards in many countries’ health services. Data are commonly taken from hospitals’ administrative data sets and national clinical audits, or collected specifically for the measurement of performance indicators. The range, type, construction, and use of such indicators vary greatly across countries.

In the paper ‘Intelligent Information: a national system for monitoring clinical performance’, The Dr Foster Unit describes a performance monitoring tool used by nearly 100 National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in England (Dr. Foster Intelligence 2005).

This system allows the monitoring of clinical outcomes with a short time lag and has considerable advantages over more traditional league tables that are still sometimes used in the United Kingdom.

The system can be seen as a management tool for clinicians and managers, offering prospective near real-time monitoring of different outcomes within hospitals. It could act as a focus for intelligently directed clinical audit with the real potential to reveal both problems and good practice well in advance of the U.K. Healthcare Commission’s ‘‘annual health check’’ or similar governmental assessments. The usability of the tool’s front end is important so that the retrieval of well-presented key information is as quick and easy as possible. Additionally, wider availability and prospective monitoring are required to fully assess the method’s utility.